


White and Red

by ExpatGirl



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: 18th Century, Bodice-Ripper, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Femslash, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 17:23:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12916677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: You never, Rowena thought, as the sweetness of the apple filled her mouth, forget your first taste.





	White and Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurningTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/gifts).



> This is a sequel to [ Red and White](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8720614), which you may want to read first. Or not! It's up to you.
> 
> The prompt for both of them was 'apple'.

Rowena hadn’t thought of the little cabin in the woods in half a century. Perhaps longer. It was difficult to tell sometimes. She’d moved three times in as many decades--people were so  _quick_ to get out the torches and pitchforks these days. A few erstwhile virgins here, a few  _minor_ plagues there, and all at once people were calling for you to be burned at the stake, and you were sneaking out of town in the middle of the night with only as much gold as you could carry.

It was hardly a civilized way to live, but Rowena had long abandoned the delusion that human beings were civilized. At least not in any of the ways that mattered.

So much for the Enlightenment.

The country hadn’t changed much in fifty years, though it still look Rowena nearly a day to remember when and why she’d been here, and why she’d left. Most places looked the same when you were leaving. It wasn’t until she saw a familiar boulevard of cypresses bending away to an equally-familiar doorway--a doorway that led to a peristyle, which led to a series of rooms, that ended in a four-poster bed hung with gold brocade--that it all fell back into place.

“Ah,” she said, settling back into the seat of coach. She picked invisible dust from her sleeve. This place, she’d left early in the morning. That, at least, had been a relatively sedate affair. She’d memorized the place’s secret passages, and so had been in and out, sleeping in her own bed before the alarm had sounded.

She leaned out the window and called to the driver. He didn’t speak English, but he had an extremely firm...everything, and so she was willing to work with what she had. Eventually, through a series of gestures and half-remembered phrases, they turned east, into the town.

“What a cesspit,” Rowena muttered, disembarking in front of an inn.

“Wait here,” she said, slowly, to the driver, punctuating her words with a hand on his chest. She repeated it, and the caress, until he nodded.

She smiled and went inside.

****

When she’d paid and dismissed the driver--there was some trouble locating a boot (his) and a stocking (hers)--she knelt at the hearth and lit a fire. She wrote a few runes in the ashes, as fresh in her mind as the day she’d learned them, and a burnished pool of silver condensed itself.

“There you are, my lovely,” she crooned, holding the mirror up and peering into it. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. We must fix that, mustn’t we? I’ll think of something.”

Rowena sat on the bed, not minding how disheveled it was.  She ran her finger along the center, lovingly, and the mirror rippled in response, before going still. It let out a faint, sonorous hum in response to her touch.

“Oh? Now  _there’s_ someone I’ve not thought of in....” She looked away. “Quite some time.”

The mirror murmured again. “I forgot how much  _backchat_ you’re able to do without a mouth.” She sighed. “Very well,” she said. “Show me.”

And it did.

****

“Done well for yourself, haven’t you, little bird?” Rowena asked, two days later, as she stepped across the threshold to the cabin. The move from bright sunlight to the cool dimness of the interior meant that she couldn’t clearly see the person standing by the chimney breast. But the details were unchanged. That black hair, now in an elaborate series of braids and curls, that slender back, that white neck--

“Hello, Rowena.”

“You remember me,” Rowena said, settling her traveling cloak on a hook. “Of course, kissing me usually  _is_ a memorable experience.”

The girl turned. Or rather, a woman now; though, if pressed, Rowena would say that five years had passed since they last saw each other, not fifty. Except the eyes. The eyes always told.

 

“Yes,” she said, smiling, lifting that pointed little chin. “I’ve never quite forgotten it.” She reached into the pocket of her gown. “I thought you might be hungry from your travels.” She held out her hand. In her palm lay one perfect apple, nearly as red as her mouth.

And the eyes told.

“Well. I don’t usually indulge in snacking between meals,” Rowena said. She took one slow step, then another. “But I think,” she continued, lifting the girl’s hand to her mouth, “I might make an exception for you.”

 _You never,_ Rowena thought, as the sweetness of the apple filled her mouth,  _forget your first taste._

  
***

The cabin had no bed to speak of, but at some point they’d sunk onto the pile of furs that had served as the previous inhabitants’ sleeping space.

“What do they call you now?” Rowena asked, as her head fell back, inviting kisses, inviting the sting of teeth, inviting anything at that point to encourage that troubling mouth to trouble her more. Fortunately, the girl was keen to accept the invitation, while her hands went to work on the front of Rowena’s gown.

“Your Majesty, usually,”  the girl said, pausing, before becoming impatient with Rowena’s stays. There was a rending sound, loud enough to startle Rowena,  before she laughed from the depths of her bared body. The girl grinned at her. Rowena remembered the Fae blood, so easily bought. Or perhaps, not so easily.

“I’ve forgotten the name I used to have,” she said, settling between Rowena’s knees. “That girl’s long dead. I call myself Bianca, of Neve.”

“A cold name,” Rowena panted.

“I am cold,” she said, with her darkly burning eyes. She planted a kiss on the inside of Rowena’s left thigh. “For most people.” Another kiss, on the right this time, and higher. “But not, perhaps, for you.” And then the troubling heat of her hands and mouth converged, right in the center.

****

Rowena left town three days later. No blood this time, nor gold, but a mirror and a name. And a date in fifty years’ time.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I'm late posting your birthday present, Tea. Please accept this femslash as apology.


End file.
